18 Last Week of February, 2017 (2/2)
”Did she have a new boyfriend?”
”No.”
”There's something you're not telling me.”
”There are six hundred things I'm not telling you,” Gemma said. ”Because I'm a private person. And my friend just died. I'm sad and I'm trying to deal with it. Is that all right with you?”
”No,” said Chance. ”I need to understand what happened.”
”Look. The rule of you staying in this flat is, don't ask Gemma a million questions about Will's private life. Or about Gemma's private life. Then we can get along. All right?”
Chance sputtered. ”The rule of this flat? What are you talking about, the rule of this flat?”
”Every place has rules. What you do when you come into a new place is, you figure them out. Like when you're a guest, you learn the codes of behavior and adapt. Yes?”
”Maybe that's what you do.”
”That's what everyone does. You work out how loud you can talk, how you can sit, what things are okay to say and what's rude. It's called being a human in society.”
”Nah.” Chance crossed his legs in a leisurely fashion. ”I'm not that fake. I just do what feels right to me. And you know what? It's never been a problem, until now.”
”Because you're you.”
”What does that mean?”
”You're a guy. You come from money, you're white, you have really good teeth, you graduated from Yale, the list goes on.”
”So?”
”Other people adapt to you, asshole. You think there's no adapting going on, but you're fucking blind, Chance. It's all around you, all the time.”
”That's a point,” he said. ”Okay, I'll grant you that.”
”Thank you.”
”But if you're thinking through all that lunacy every time you walk into a new situation, then there is something seriously wrong with you, Gemma.”
”My friend is dead,” she told him. ”That's what's wrong with me.”